


Keeping to Pattern

by doctormchotson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas, F/F, Female John Watson, Female Sherlock Holmes, Female Sherlock Holmes/Female John Watson, Femlock, First Kiss, Fluff, Punklock, Tumblr: exchangelock, background Mystrade if you squint, brief periods of almost angst, but mostly it's a fluff festival seriously, exchangelock, fem!punk!lock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctormchotson/pseuds/doctormchotson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is acting weird (or, rather, weirder than usual) and, as Christmas approaches, Johnny is definitely, absolutely, positively <i>not</i> panicking.</p>
<p>Fem!punk!lock Christmas fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping to Pattern

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Practicefortheheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Practicefortheheart/gifts).



> When I found out I'd gotten practicefortheheart's prompt for the Holiday Exchangelock 2014 I just about had a heart attack as she's one of my absolute favorite fanartists. This isn't precisely the fic I thought it would be when I started it, but Nina, I hope you enjoy it anyway ❤
> 
> Thank you to Delaney for the title consult. Endless thanks to Ashley for the beta, brainstorming, inspiration, and heartfelt cheerleading. This fic would not exist without her.

Johnny Watson, trained surgeon and former Captain of the Northumberland Fusiliers, was not a woman prone to panic. Some might even say that her cool countenance in the face of dire circumstances was her best, most attractive feature. (Others, incidentally, would say that was her arse, which, while she didn't exactly _agree_ , she didn't quite _disagree_ either.) 

She was Johnny Got Her Gun Watson, with sharp eyes and steady hands, and she did not panic. 

So, obviously, as she marched from one end of the sitting room of 221B to the other, hand yanking on the long side of her half shaved hair, tattoos rippling with the rapid up and down motion of her collarbone exposed by her cropped tank, she was most definitely not panicking. She was...concerned. Yes, that was it, _concerned_. 

It just so happened that this particular episode of _concern_ took place on Christmas Eve, the soft snowfall drifting beyond the windows and the cheerful caroling from the street below utterly at odds to the military drums of Johnny's boots thumping the floor. As anyone with any knowledge of the inhabitants of this particular flat could most assuredly guess, the emotional turmoil affecting Johnny was directly at the hands of one Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, punk rock princess, and general pain in Watson's aforementioned (rather glorious) arse. 

For the past month, Sherlock had been acting... _shifty_. Well, shiftier than usual anyway, since it could hardly be said that Sherlock was a bastion of socially typical and acceptable behavior. Which, incidentally, was why Johnny didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when her best friend had flung herself from a Mind Palace stupor, shouted "ANTLERS!", grabbed up her laptop and strode purposefully into her bedroom, only to come slamming back and straight out of the flat without one word to her flatmate. When Sherlock had come home several hours later, entering through the kitchen door so she didn't pass through the sitting room, and shut the door to her bedroom with a click, Johnny hadn't even turned her head away from the Bond marathon on the telly. (She might've had it been Brosnan, but since it was Connery, _young_ Connery at that, it would've likely taken gunfire to distract her.) 

It took about a week of locked bedroom doors, muffled swearing, ignored cases, and sneaking out at odd hours throughout the day for Johnny to start wondering if maybe, just maybe, something was not quite right. Sherlock would likely have said that Johnny "saw but did not observe" _if she was saying anything to her at all_. 

After another week of failed attempts to get Sherlock to explain her periodic absences ("Busy," "Homeless network," and " _Things_ " spat with a scathing glare were the detective's favored responses), Johnny finally caved to temptation and snooped through Sherlock's bedroom. With hesitant steps and a bizarre sense of guilt, she (very unnecessarily and ineffectively) tiptoed past the threshold. 

She found precisely _nothing_ concerning. Not that she particularly knew what she'd been looking for. Needles? Little baggies of powder? Secret correspondence with criminally insane Irishmen? Regardless, the place was precisely as disorganized and Sherlock-strange as it had been the last time she'd been in there. The only thing that seemed even slightly odd in this haven for pinned bugs and obscure martial arts certificates was a ball of deep navy yarn. Johnny peered at it closely but did not touch. It was really best that way, considering Sherlock's tendency to dip things in substances one would really _really_ rather not have all over one's hands. 

After the failure of her own personal drug bust of sorts, Johnny had hoped she'd feel relieved. After all, there had to be some reason Sherlock had locked herself into her room so often of late, but with no incriminating evidence it couldn't be _that_ bad. Right? Right. 

For the rest of the next week she did her level best to brush off her concerns. Maybe Sherlock was just going through a particularly black period; she was prone to her moods after all. Or maybe she had an experiment she was too deeply engrossed in to tell Johnny what was going on. Or, and this possibility hit just a bit too close to home, perhaps the events of the past years, Mark and Moriarty and Johnny's miscarriage, had finally caught up with Sherlock. Maybe she just needed room, and a little time, and a chance to build up all the walls that had come crashing down between her and Johnny in the past few months. 

Whatever it was, Johnny tried her best to smother her paranoia, to allow Sherlock her eccentricies, her space. And if she surreptitiously checked over her skin every time Sherlock passed by in just a tank, looking for fresh wounds marring the artwork flowing across her skin, for signs the hoops in her ears and the stud visible in an occasional flash of tongue had been ripped from her or stretched, for bruising painting new colors on her ink-free wrists, that was just her being a caring friend. And if more and more often her eyes lingered on the curve of a hip, the swell of breasts, the sweet way her untrimmed, undyed sideburns curled against her cheek, well, no one needed to know about that. 

It wasn't until Christmas Eve, just hours before Dr. Watson found herself wearing a hole in her floor, that the flood of... _concern_ made itself completely un-smotherable. Sherlock had come out of her bedroom after a record-breaking 47 hours looking harried, already wearing her Belstaff, and muttering to herself. As she dropped to her knees to look under the couch for...something, Johnny (who absolutely did not spend a good five seconds thoroughly distracted by that arse in those jeans) noticed the way the coat was bulging in places she was positively certain had nothing to do with her flatmate's trim yet curvaceous body. When Sherlock sat up on her heels, still muttering, clutched her coat closed against her chest like her life depended on it, and made her long-legged way to the door, something within Johnny snapped. 

"Where are you off to, then?" she murmured, voice cold and hard, Captain Watson coming to the fore. 

Sherlock's smooth, elegant steps stuttered and her hand froze on its mission to reach the door handle. Her whole body paused until she tilted her faux-hawked head just far enough that Johnny could see the shape of her nose and brows but could not read her eyes. 

"Nowhere, Johnny. Out." she tried to snap the words but some small thread of anxiety snuck it's way past her vocal chords to snag on Johnny's ears. 

Johnny huffed through her nostrils, fists rolling into a clench. "Right, ok, new question. Why are you lying to me?" 

Sherlock's eyes snapped to hers then, wide with a momentary undisguised shock before shuttering back to a studied boredom. "What cause would I have to lie to you, Johnny?" 

Even before the sentence had fully left Sherlock's mouth, Johnny lifted a finger in her direction and snapped out a strangled, "Don't -" through clenched teeth. "Just. Just don't, Sherlock. I know you for real," she said, her voice taking on a bit of a mocking lilt at the last sentence. "I know, now, when you're hiding something from me." 

She glared up at her flatmate and best friend, anger licking flames up her chest. 

Teeth snagging on her lower lip, Sherlock dropped her eyes to the floor, seemingly in thought. After a long tense moment she whispered, "Yes, alright, I'm. I'm hiding something from you. But!" she cried, stretching out an arm imploringly to Johnny in response to the blonde's snarl. The effect was immediately ruined by her hasty grab at her coat, cinching the sides closed again. "But," she repeated, and wasn't that bizarre on it's own, "I-I have a good reason. I do, and. And I need you to-to trust me. Please. Just. Just trust me." 

She was begging, practically, at the end, or as close as Sherlock Holmes would ever come to it, Johnny imagined. Her voice was soft and without trace of manipulation, her eyes, while certain and confident, were laced with something much more believable than pleading; fear. 

Johnny licked her bottom lip, tongue catching on the ring there. She clenched her fists and released them, rolling each finger out of its tight snarl. With a rush of defeated air she nodded, mouth twisted unhappily. Sherlock watched her a moment more, eyes flicking across her face, until finally she found whatever she was looking for and nodded in return. 

As she turned once again for the door she murmured apologetically, "I'll be late, don't wait up," and then she was gone, footsteps softer on the stair than Johnny thought she'd ever heard. 

Two hours and innumerable laps across the weathered floorboards later, Johnny was still very much, absolutely not panicking. 

Two and a half hours and a good ten minutes of hair abuse later, however, she admitted she might be panicking. A little. 

Two hours and thirty five minutes later and her phone was in her hand, finger hovered over a speed dial that would probably mean at least a week of Sherlock playing discordant melodies at arse-o'clock. 

After another Consulting Detective-less glance out the snowy window, and one last tug at tormented locks, she pressed the button. 

The instant the phone was pressed to her ear, Mycroft Holmes' posh perfunctory voice oozed its way through the speaker. 

"Good evening Johnny, if you'll forgive me I have some rather...pressing matters to attend to at the moment and so I shall have to dispense with the formalities." 

Johnny nodded and then wondered why in the world she did considering it was a phone call. Then the CCTV camera across the street gave a subtle side-to-side wave and she remembered who she was talking to. 

"Sherlock is not doing drugs. She is not meeting with any nefarious individuals, at least not more so than is typical. She is also not committing any crimes. Aside from jaywalking and the occasional pickpocketing but as you are usually complicit in those activities I doubt that would be of interest to you at this time." 

Johnny snickered in memory of the last time Sherlock had pickpocketed Mycroft, replacing his pocket watch with a pastel colored "I Heart Cake" pin Johnny had purchased from a small shop for just that very purpose. 

"As such, I can only reassure you that Sherlock's behavior, while odd and, from your perspective I imagine deeply troublesome, is not something one should be worried about." 

Before she could put voice to a retort to that, he continued in a softer, less staccato manner, "Remember Johnny, I worry about her constantly. Do please believe me when I say this is actually...most refreshing, for her." 

Her brow furrowed in confusion at his cryptic words but just as she opened her mouth to demand he quit the bloody obfuscating, he cut her off. 

"Now, as I said, pressing matters and, ah-" there was a strange rustling over the line and something that sounded like it might be a man's voice, "I really must be going. Happy Christmas, Johnny," he said, and hung up. 

Johnny pushed out her lips and furrowed her brows at her phone in confusion, but decided the mysteries of one Holmes are more than enough for an entire bloody lifetime, thank you very much. 

Even though she knew that should be enough, the reassurances of, arguably, the most overly cautious big brother in the entire world, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was Not Fine. Fingers drumming on the windowsill, and toe tapping on the floorboards, she decided another call might just be in order. 

Lestrade picked up on the third ring, voice gruff but tinged with mirth. "Johnny, hullo." 

"Lestrade, hi, sorry to bother you so late but-" 

"You're worried about Sherlock." 

Johnny blinked unseeingly at the street below. "How-?" 

"Let's just say a little bird told me and leave it at that, yeah?" 

"But!" Johnny spluttered. 

"She's not on any cases you don't know about," he said, rolling right over her affronted noises. "I would tell you if she was getting in over her head with something, trying to protect you by leaving you out of it. You know that, Johnny," his voice turned quieter, more solemn at the last. 

With a swallow and a slow slide of tongue across her front teeth, Johnny nodded at nothing. "Yeah, Greg. I do, I do know that, I just-" 

"Look," Lestrade said, and then paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. "I'm telling you there's nothin' you need to worry yourself over. Ok?" a rustling noise came over the speakers and Lestrade took a quick breath. "Look, Johnny, I gotta go, but it's alright, yeah? She's just...trying something new." 

There was silence for a bare moment, but before Johnny could ask what the bloody fuck he meant by that, he was rushing out, "Nng gotta go, Happy Christmas," and all she had left to yell at was dial tone. 

With a growl of frustration she threw her phone onto the couch and flung herself into her armchair. With her fingers buried in her hair, Johnny tried to let herself be comforted by the complete acceptance of Sherlock's behavior by two men who know her almost as well as Johnny herself does. It wasn't until she's replaying, again, all the horrific possibilities (several of which have been eliminated) that she realized she had one more phone call to make. 

She straightened her spine with a crack, shoulders squaring up perfectly, before she took a deep breath and retrieved her phone from the couch cushions. Several seconds passed as she deliberated, and then she decided fuck it all and dialed. 

Two rings later and Molly Hooper's voice chirped happily across the line. 

"Johnny! Hi! How are you?" 

Johnny cleared her voice, "I'm, ah, good, fine. Yeah." She took a deep breath. "Look, Molly, there's. There's something I need to ask you. It's about Sherlock," she said, voice unwavering in the way it only ever was when she was staring down the end of a barrel 

"Oh." Molly's voice was small, and squeaked in that way it always does when she knows she has to lie. Johnny had become forcibly aware of that particular tell in much unhappier times. "It's, um, it's nothing! I mean. Not that you said what it was but. She's fine! Or, or she seems that way, to me. Not that she tells me much outside of work but. Um." 

Johnny cut her off, putting her out of her misery. 

"Molly," Johnny let a little of her anguish bleed through her voice, "Molly please. Don't lie to me, not about this. You promised me, you /promised/ after -" she has to clear her voice. "after...God dammit, Molly just. Just tell me she's not -" 

"Oh, oh Johnny, no" Molly interrupted her, stuttering a bit in her efforts to cut off _that_ train of thought. "No, Johnny. I promise, not, nothing like that, you have nothing to worry about." She paused at that. "Well..." 

"Molly" Johnny growled into the phone, eliciting a squeak from the flustered pathologist. 

"No! Not! Not like! JUST WAIT ONE MORE DAY, DAMMIT!" 

There's a stunned silence from both sides of the phone call. Molly cleared her throat primly and Johnny shut her gaping mouth with a click. 

"...Right. Um." Johnny scratched at the soft burr of buzzed hair over her right ear. "Th-Thank you...?" 

"Yes. Well." 

After a stilted pause, Johnny huffed a laugh and shook her head, suddenly more relieved than she thought she ought to be after being yelled at by arguably the meekest woman she knew. "Happy Christmas, Molly." 

"Happy Christmas, Johnny," Molly replied, and the fondness was tangible. 

As she hung up the phone, she wasn't exactly sure that she felt better, but she did feel, maybe, a bit less frightened. She could admit to that then, the fear, because it was no longer threatening to drown her. 

 

~❄~❄~❄~❄~❄~❄~

 

When Johnny first awoke, it was to that tingling awareness of eyes on her skin. She kept her eyes closed, breathing even as if still in sleep, because even though she sensed no threat in the familiar world of 221B’s living room, some lessons the army taught were never unlearned. 

After several long moments of the ruse, Sherlock’s exasperated sigh finally pulled Johnny’s lips twitching into a smirk. Her eyes slowly blinked open, grit and the vestiges of uncleaned mascara sticking the lashes together until they snapped apart to the image of Sherlock Holmes staring intently at her from her perch on the nearest arm of the couch. Sherlock’s face was make-up free, hair fluffy with lack of product, and she was clad in her typical sleepwear of an enormous t-shirt and silk pants. Something about her looked softer like this, like all her sharp edges were blurred with the weak morning sun and the fairy lights twinkling across her skin. Were it not for the manic way her hands were twitching in her lap and the harried darkness to the skin beneath her iridescent eyes, one might almost be tricked into believing she’d actually slept the night before. 

As Johnny stretched a bit to get the stiffness out of her bad shoulder, the blanket she had only just become aware was draped over her slipped, pooling on top of a very crinkly _something_ on her lap. She flicked a frown up to Sherlock who snapped out, “Open it.” 

Johnny lifted a brow at the rudeness. Sherlock give an eye roll and a rather impressive sigh. “Happy Christmas. Now open it.” At the lift of Johnny’s other brow she added sotto voice and quite bitterly, “ _Please_.” 

Without even attempting to contain her smile, Johnny pulled the blanket back and examined the package on her legs. It was rectangular in shape, soft with no hard edges, so its contents were obviously some kind of cloth or fabric. The wrapping was a plain, deep red colour crossed in gold ribbon with a hand tied bow directly in the center. The edges were neat, the folds far crisper than Johnny had ever managed with this type of gift, although that was hardly surprising considering the gifter, and no card or tag adorned it. 

Johnny lifted the package and gently began tugging at one of the taped seams in the wrapping, a practice that never failed to drive Sherlock barmy. This was no exception, the twitching spreading from her hands down to her bare feet which began tapping a rapid rhythm on the floor. When Johnny peeled off the next piece of tape exaggeratedly slowly, Sherlock puffed air through her nose like a bull, disturbing the ring in the side of her nostril. 

Finally taking pity on her flatmate Johnny gave in and tore through the rest of the wrapping and stared, half in shock, at what was revealed. Folded neatly in her hands was a sweater. It was a deep navy blue, soft and lush, warm against her fingers. Judging by the look of it, Johnny had a sense it was hand knit and a rush of deductions slammed into her; Sherlock’s bizarre absences, the muffled swearing often heard from her room these past few months, the yarn Johnny found in her snooping, identical in shade to the creation now held in her hands. When she lifted it up by the shoulders a pattern was revealed; Billy, Sherlock’s skull friend, wearing a jauntily angled Santa hat. 

Johnny laughed delightedly and stood up to tug it over her head, the soft wool feeling heavenly on her skin. She tugged on the hem to get another (upside down) look at the pattern. The sweater was a bit long in the arms and a bit short in the length, and there was an error or two in Billy’s face, but Johnny had never seen anything better in her life. 

No-doubt-ridiculous smile plastered on her mouth, she turned her head, only tearing her eyes from the sweater at the last second to lock on to her flatmate’s face. Sherlock was chewing on her lower lip, toying with the ball piercing beneath it, eyes flicking all over Johnny’s face in the most abjectly anxious expression she’d ever seen. It was breathtaking, this tangible proof of emotion that Johnny always knew was present but never got to actually _see_. To imagine that this display was somehow brought on by _her_ was exhilarating. 

In that moment, all the worry of the last months left her in a rush and in its place a new feeling replaced it, flowing warm from her belly all the way down to her toes, filling her cheeks, and lighting her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t a new feeling at all, she thought. Maybe it was a very, very old feeling, seen from a new perspective. Maybe, just maybe, they had both been idiots for a very long time. 

With another laugh from Johnny, joy bubbling out of her chest in a flood, Sherlock’s pensive expression finally melted away. Happiness bloomed on her face, adding a tinge of pink to her cheeks, and she chuckled, deep and beautiful. 

Before she could give herself a second to think her way out of the decision, Johnny, still laughing, took two short strides, placed a gentle hand on Sherlock’s neck, fingers threaded in the hair at her nape, and pressed their smiling mouths together. 

The kiss was light, chaste, made silly by the wide stretch of their lips. An electric buzz hummed across Johnny's skin where they touched and something seemed to click within her chest, just next to where her heart was hammering away in incandescent happiness. A tingling sensation slowly spread throughout her body, like a the pleasant aspects of a limb, long asleep, finally awakening again. 

With a brush of her thumb along Sherlock's jaw, now lax with shock, Johnny pulled back just far enough to see her best friend's face. Those madcap, impossible eyes stared back at her, unfocused at first, and wasn't that a thrill, to dim the lights in that great bloody brain with nothing more than a kiss. 

A blink and Sherlock was back, sharp and piercing as ever. Her eyes zoomed across every bit of Johnny they could reach, searching more intently than they ever had in the throes of The Work. They lingered half a moment on Johnny's lips until at last, they returned to her waiting gaze. Whatever she saw there must have been what she had been looking for because she laughed, high and effervescent, and, answering grin in place, Johnny dipped back in to taste the sound. 

Sherlock's hand threaded into the long side of Johnny's hair and she surged up against her still Army firm body. The kiss stayed light and chaste for a moment, until Sherlock gave Johnny's lip ring a gentle tug. With a moan that shook them both, Johnny opened for her. 

At the first slick flutter of Sherlock's tongue, and a glimmer of a taste of the warm metal of her tongue piercing, the thunk of the door to 221B and a high, "Oh!" snapped the two apart. 

Mrs. Hudson stood at their threshold, bearing tea and reindeer antlers (which, to Johnny's surprise, Sherlock couldn't even muster a glare for) smiling hugely. 

"Oh, oh _girls_!" she tittered excitedly. With a flurry she set down the tea tray (and the antlers, thankfully) on the coffee table and enveloped them both in a perfumed hug. 

"Oh my girls, I'm so _pleased_ , I was beginning to think it wouldn't happen in my lifetime you know." She pulled back to glare at them, or attempt to, since her excitement was too pervasive to hold the pose for long. 

With a dewey smile she pressed quick, firm kisses to both of their cheeks, hugging them both to her again before scurrying away, muttering something about, "giving you two a chance to get _acquainted_." A saucy wink tossed over her shoulder, and the very deliberate click of the door shutting behind her heralded her exit. 

After a moment to process the extremely sudden chaos, followed by the even more sudden departure, the two women risked a glance at each other and promptly fell into giggling. They clutched at each other, cheeks pressed tight together, hands clenched in clothing, shaking with mirth. 

Once their laughter had slowed, Johnny rolled her face so their foreheads were pressed together. She closed her eyes, smiling softly, content with the world. 

Suddenly her eyes shot open. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I'd almost forgotten!" 

Stepping purposefully away from her flatmate (girlfriend?) with a lingering slide of her hand down her arm, she strode to the tree, bending down to rummage underneath it a bit. When she popped back up again, she held a package in her hands which she thrust at Sherlock. It was green, tied with a silver ribbon, a bit messily wrapped, and quite similar in size and shape to the one she had received. 

With a wry twist to her lips Johnny said, "It's not hand knitted, I'm afraid." 

Sherlock did a complicated sort of grin while frowning, obviously aware of what the gift was but not the specifics, and immediately tore into the paper. Once the tornado of shiny fragments had calmed, in her hands lay a sweater, red and white, patterned with three fornicating reindeer. 

"Really?" she drawled up at Johnny who was unsuccessfully attempting to swallow her grin. 

"C'mon then, put it on," Johnny said, gesturing at the sweater. 

With possibly less fanfare and dramatics than might be usual, Sherlock thrust the sweater over her head, somehow managing /not/ to fluff her hair to unimaginable proportions in the process, a skill for which Johnny was deeply envious. 

At the image of Sherlock's deeply unimpressed face and the utterly inappropriate design on the sweater, Johnny lost it, collapsing into a giggle fit. 

Scowling playfully, Sherlock stood and, with that always astonishing quickness and grace, took a still-laughing Johnny by the forearms and pressed her against the wall next to the mantle. Utterly unintimidated (but breathless from more than just the laughter) Johnny looked up at Sherlock, smiling softly, wrapped her arms around her waist and dragged her closer, so that she was well and truly trapped by her body. 

Sherlock gently dropped her forehead to Johnny's and slid her hands slowly up her arms until they cradled her neck, thumb gently brushing against her pulsepoint. Johnny shivered, and in response Sherlock shuddered out an exhale which fanned across her lips. 

Voice no more than a whisper, Sherlock breathed, "Happy Christmas, Johnny Watson." 

Johnny tilted her face so that their noses brushed in a tender caress and murmured, "Happy Christmas, Sherlock Holmes." 

And as the fairy lights twinkled, and the snow fell softly on the windowpane, and their mouths slowly learned to make a home with one another, Johnny Watson was filled to the brim with warmth, and joy, and love. 

**Author's Note:**

> [cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie music plays in the background]
> 
> Thank you to all who read, comment, and leave kudos. Concrit always loved and appreciated.


End file.
